Why Female Founders Still Get Less Than 2% of the Funding with David B. Horne

through, I think it must have been pivotal, right? Because now you're looking and you realize that access to capital is not as equal as it appeared to be.

So when did this come up in your radar in your

life? As I said, it came up when I was speaking at that event in late 2019.

The unfair access to capital came about in the autumn of 2019.

Okay.

And you know, you do a lot, like you say, there's a book called Phase Find and then Consolidated Exit, right? Acquire Consolidated Exit.

So I think before this recording, I mentioned to you, I think one of the most difficult, sales could be one thing that's difficult, right? But exit also is difficult, right? We can scale, but it's so difficult to exit.

Can you maybe share to maybe the listener out there, why is it important to actually exit, right?

Well, ultimately exiting, you know, and if you're raising money from investors, an exit can be one of two things.

It could be that your investors are exiting, so they might be selling on to another investor or you might be buying back their investment or whatever.

So there's an exit for the investor.

But then there's also the exit for the founder, which is when they ultimately step away from the business.

and the biggest challenge there is really making sure that the business has been groomed if you will to be not founder dependent

so that

there's a team of people so that when the founder steps away from the business the business carries on right that's the most difficult

part you reckon most challenging

absolutely that is absolutely the most difficult part and it's the most difficult part inside the founder's head because they think they need to be involved in everything And so it's really, really important.

And one of the things I talk about in my discussions, in my books and my presentations is that every business is unique, but at their heart, every business is the same.

They have to go out and find and win customers.

That's called sales and marketing.

They have to deliver whatever it is they've sold to their customers.

That's called operations.

And they have to manage the flow of money in and out and governance and compliance and all of that.

And that's called finance.

You need all three of those legs to be strong.